Free agents are getting paid handsomely this offseason, and that includes Taijuan Walker. On Tuesday night, it was reported that the 30-year-old right-hander had agreed to a four-year, $72 million contract with the Phillies — not exactly Aaron Judge or Trea Turner money, yet further evidence that this is anything but a bear market for players, particularly starting pitchers.

The Dave Dombrowski-led team has good reason to be bullish on its latest acquisition. Back to full health after shoulder and elbow woes cost him all but 14 innings in 2018 and ’19 (he threw 53.1 frames in the truncated 2020 campaign), Walker has tossed 316.1 innings over the past two seasons. Moreover, he’s coming off of a year where he logged a 3.49 ERA, a 3.65 FIP, and a 21.5% strikeout rate with the Mets.

The Phillies are coming off of a World Series appearance, and while that presumably appealed to Walker — who wouldn’t want to play for a team aggressively chasing rings? — so too would the progressive pitching environment he’ll be joining. When Walker was interviewed here at FanGraphs in January 2021, roughly one month before signing as a free agent with the Mets, he spoke of how he’d previously worked out at Driveline, and how, as a pitcher, “you’d clearly prefer that your next team is one that places a high value on technology and data.”

Jeremy Hefner, the Mets’ pitching coach for each of the past three seasons, is analytically-inclined. Philadelphia’s pitching coach is Driveline-educated Caleb Cotham. Read the rest of this entry »

On a busy Tuesday at the Winter Meetings, the Cubs filled a hole in their outfield, signing centerfielder Cody Bellinger to a one-year deal with a mutual option for a second year, totaling $17.5 million in guaranteed money. The agreement gives the former MVP a change of scenery in his campaign to revive some version of the five-tool player who posted 7.7 WAR in his third full season at the age of 24 back in 2019 but has battled injuries and struggled mightily at the plate since then. For the Cubs, it’s a bet on a 27-year-old who they can reasonably expect, if healthy, to be no less than a solid defender in center field with a possibility to contribute a lot more value at the plate. It also means a chance to introduce some clarity into their 2023 outfield picture; barring further changes, Bellinger will join a pair of 28-year-olds in Ian Happ in left and Seiya Suzuki in right to form a capable starting unit for a team that was forced to employ a bit of a revolving door strategy in center in 2022.

The $17.5 million guarantee comes split over the next two years, as Bellinger will earn $12 million in 2023 with a $5.5 million buyout on the mutual option for the second year of the contract. This structure has become somewhat of a signature for the Cubs, who have signed a number of one-year deals with mutual options in the last couple of offseasons, including with Mychal Givens, Drew Smyly, and Jonathan Villar in 2022 and Jake Arrieta, Jake Marisnick, Joc Pederson, and Andrew Chafin in ’21. Mutual options are exceedingly unlikely to be picked up; in all likelihood, either the player did well enough in year one of the contract to want to test free agency or poorly enough that the club is unwilling to pay its end of the option. But the structure allows the team to offer a higher guarantee on a short-term contract while limiting its annual commitments under the salary tax and effectively deferring some portion of the money. For Chicago, Bellinger represents the beginning of what team president Jed Hoyer has indicated will be a busy offseason; just a few hours later, the Cubs signed right-hander Jameson Taillon to a four-year, $68 million deal. Attracting talent like Bellinger while managing to keep a good chunk of guaranteed money off the 2023 books is a great way to keep other doors open across the market. Read the rest of this entry »

We’re now in the thick of the annual Winter Meetings, and we saw a handful of free-agent starters fly off the board on Tuesday. First, Andrew Heaney signed with the Rangers. Then the insatiable Phillies gobbled up Taijuan Walker. And before an eventful day came to a close, the Cubs finally opened their wallet by inking Jameson Taillon to a four-year deal worth $68 million.

This has been a player-friendly market, and one that’s been particularly rewarding to starting pitchers. All three listed above tore through their crowdsourced contract estimates and Ben Clemens’ own: Heaney got not one but two years with an opt-out; Walker beat his projected contract total by $30 million; and Taillon also exceeded expectations by a similar margin. It’s clear teams have been willing to spend, but it’s also evidence of just how scarce starting pitching is nowadays. There’s nary a pitcher who can carry the burden of 200-plus innings, so the 170–180 mark seems like the new gold standard. Heaney’s appeal lies in his upside, not durability, but you could count on Walker and Taillon to provide a full season’s worth of starts.

The Cubs needed a rotation stalwart. That their most reliable starter last season was Marcus Stroman, who recorded a 3.50 ERA across 138.2 frames, isn’t great news. Late-bloomer Justin Steele had the best rate statistics, but he’ll probably only see a minor increase to his workload. Kyle Hendricks is on the last year of his contract and well past his prime, and counting on Adrian Sampson for a second season would be most unwise. Chicago has a couple of pitching prospects on their way, and Hayden Wesneski looked promising in his first big league forays. But as always, the issue is innings, innings, innings. The Cubs would most definitely prefer to protect their young starters and test their potential in abbreviated outings. Taillon is the big brother who can absorb the second and third times through an order. Read the rest of this entry »

A few days after signing Jacob deGrom to lead their rotation, the Texas Rangers continued to bolster their pitching staff, signing Andrew Heaney to a two-year contract that could be worth up to $37 million total. The base salary is $25 million with up to $12 million in additional incentives; the deal also includes an opt-out after 2023.

After limping to a 5.83 ERA in 2021 while pitching for the Angels and Yankees, Heaney signed a one-year, bounce-back deal with the Dodgers, and bounce back he did. With a 25.4% career strikeout rate, he’s had no problems sending batters down on strikes over the years. He took that ability to new levels in 2022, pushing his strikeout rate to a career-high 35.5% while also logging career bests in ERA (3.10) and strikeout-to-walk ratio (5.79).

However, that penchant for Ks comes with a really nasty habit of allowing far too many home runs. Over the last five seasons, his 27.2% strikeout rate ranks 28th among all qualified starting pitchers, while his 1.64 HR/9 ranks 12th. He was able to offset some of that damage with his improvements this year, but it’s a real sticking point that has held him back from becoming one of the premiere starters in baseball. Read the rest of this entry »

You might have heard that the Mets got hit by a record 112 pitches in 2022, but New York wasn’t the only record breaker in that particular category. Cincinnati’s pitching staff breezed by the 2021 Cubs’ modern era record of 98 HBPs with weeks left in the season, and they kept right on plunking. In the last game of the year, Graham Ashcraft sailed a sinker into both the triceps of Patrick Wisdom and the record books, giving the Reds 110 hit batters for the season. That number edged them past the 1899 Cleveland Spiders as the most contact-oriented team of all-time.

Those bloodthirsty Spiders hit 109 batters and lost 134 games, then folded just before the invention of the zeppelin. Eleven of those HBPs and losses were credited to Harry Colliflower, a former carpenter who won his first start, then lost 11 straight decisions and his spot in the big leagues. That’s the company the 2022 Reds kept. Read the rest of this entry »

Free-agent reliever Carlos Estévez has signed a two-year contract worth $13.5 million with the Angels, continuing a busy offseason in Anaheim that has already seen Tyler Anderson, Gio Urshela, and Hunter Renfroe join the roster.

#Angels sign Carlos Estevez to a 2-year deal for $13.5-million.

Don’t know yet if they plan for him to close, but Bud Black just said he has closer stuff and a closer mentality.

— Jeff Fletcher (@JeffFletcherOCR) December 5, 2022

Estévez, who turns 30 next month, has spent his entire professional career with the Rockies, playing his first six seasons in the hitter’s paradise of Coors Field. His 4.59 ERA and 4.21 FIP in 302 career innings appear a bit inflated, but they’re actually a touch better than league average (94 ERA- and FIP-). His 2022 campaign, while normal-looking on the surface, was statistically odd in many ways. Despite earning fewer strikes than ever, he set a career best in terms of overall run prevention with a 3.47 ERA, making him the second-most effective reliever on Colorado’s staff.

Wait — a .247 BABIP allowed while pitching in Coors, a stadium whose .323 BABIP ranked highest among all parks? And an above-average 10.1% HR/FB rate in the sixth-most homer-friendly park in baseball? And that was despite it being easier to make contact against Estévez than at any other point during his career? Read the rest of this entry »

Move over, Jacob deGrom; this was the best free-agent deal of last week:

Right-handed reliever Chris Martin and the Boston Red Sox are in agreement on a two-year, $17.5 million contract, pending physical, sources familiar with the deal tell ESPN. Martin, 36, was magnificent for the Dodgers after a deadline trade and parlayed it into a multiyear deal.

— Jeff Passan (@JeffPassan) December 2, 2022

I kid, but only sort of! Obviously, deGrom is a phenomenal pitcher. The Rangers did well to court him. And this isn’t me advocating for the importance of “surplus value” or whatever vague finance jargon gets thrown around these days. I just really like Chris Martin, and I also think the Red Sox got a ton of bang for their buck for signing him.

There are also things not to like about Martin, at least on the surface. If people objected to a 35-year-old first baseman getting three years, imagine their discomfort at the sight of a 36-year-old reliever getting two years. His fastball velocity is pedestrian by modern standards, his pitch movement data isn’t eye-popping, and he doesn’t throw from an unorthodox angle to compensate. In 2021, Martin’s strikeout rate plummeted to 18%, and it’s worrisome to think he could return to such a dramatic low. When the risks are lined up like this, a two-year pact comes off as unappealing. Read the rest of this entry »

I don’t bring this up very often, but before I wrote here, I had a job trading interest rates. I won’t bore you with the technical details, but I’ve been drawing on that experience a lot recently in thinking about how teams operate when signing free agents, so I thought I’d lay out my recent thoughts here. None of this is quite fully formed yet, but I think I’m on the way there, and I’d love to hear some feedback and see if I can better formulate my point as a result.

Speaking broadly, there are two main ways to get a return on your investment in finance. First, you could lean into the efficiency of the market. You’ve probably never heard of most of the companies that do this: Virtu, DRW, Jump, Hudson River, Susquehanna, Two Sigma. They’re all major players with virtually no broader name recognition. They’re broadly considered “high-frequency traders,” which means they buy and sell an absolutely massive number of stocks and bonds every day, trying to make a tiny profit on each one.

This is the “efficient market” you learned about if you took an economics class in college. If you’re trying to buy one share of a stock and I’m trying to sell one, a high-frequency trader will hope to sell to you at $100.00, buy from me at $99.99, and pocket the penny of difference. Do that a billion times, and pretty soon you’re talking about real money. It’s more complex than that — obviously, given the amount of brain and computing power all of these companies exert — but you can broadly think of them as profiting because there’s a well-accepted price for any given security at any given time, which means they can make money off of tiny deviations from that fair price. Read the rest of this entry »

Baseball’s Winter Meetings are in full swing! Now is time to make some trades. Now is the time to sign some free agents. You and I are going to put together a team. What should our team look like? Don’t worry. I’ve already decided for us.

In 2022, Mets batters got hit by 112 pitches, setting a new single-season major league record. Ever since they broke the record, I’ve been wondering how many HBP a team could rack up if they made it their sole mission. That’s our challenge.

We’ll be building our roster using Steamer projections for the 2023 season, and we’ll assemble a lineup with the goal of obliterating the Mets’ record. We’re going to get hit often and we’re going to get hit with style. To get us in the spirit of the enterprise, I’ve named our new team the Cooperstown Contusions. Before you ask, yes, our mascot will be an anthropomorphic bruise:

Read the rest of this entry »

The Colorado Rockies have received their fair share of criticism since winning 91 games and earning a Wild Card berth in 2018. Four losing seasons have played a part in that, but so too have some questionable decisions, financial and otherwise. Four months ago — and he’s no lone wolf in having offered such a critique — my colleague Dan Szymborski called Colorado “The worst-run organization in baseball.”

My own coverage of the club, which has focused primarily on players, prospects, and coaches, has included neither criticism nor compliment. Which isn’t to say I’m not intrigued by brickbats thrown. I am, which led me to approach Colorado GM Bill Schmidt to get his perspective on some of what has been said about the team he’s been with for two-plus decades.

The first thing I asked Schmidt about was the October decision to fire hitting coach Dave Magadan and replace him with Hensley “Bam Bam” Meulens, who’d previously worked with the San Francisco Giants and, this past season, the New York Yankees.

“They’re different people with different experiences.” said Schmidt, a longtime scout who replaced Jeff Bridich (initially on an interim basis) as Colorado’s GM in May 2021. “Hensley had a lot of success with the Giants. There are certain things… I’ll let him talk about the certain things he believes in, but he and Bags were different types of players who have different ideas of what they consider important.”

Bringing “Bam Bam” on board is notable in part because he’s an outsider; the Rockies have often been called an insular organization. Schmidt bristled when asked about that claim. as well as about accusations that the team he leads lacks direction. Read the rest of this entry »